The present disclosure relates to the Information Technology (IT) field. More specifically, this disclosure relates to the diagnostics of software programs. The background of the present disclosure is hereinafter introduced with the discussion of techniques relating to its context. However, even when this discussion refers to documents, acts, artifacts and the like, it does not suggest or represent that the discussed techniques are part of the prior art or are common general knowledge in the field relevant to the present disclosure.
Software programs may be subject to malfunctioning during their operation, especially when they run in a complex environment wherein multiple software programs interact among them. When this happens, diagnostics activities are commonly performed; the diagnostics activities may be aimed at identifying the cause of the malfunctioning, in order to try to fix it (by either repairing the malfunctioning permanently or simply bypassing it temporarily). For this purpose, diagnostics data (such as log files generated by tracing execution of the software programs) may be collected from the computing machines where the software programs run; the analysis of this diagnostics data provides useful hints about the context wherein the malfunctioning occurred (so as to facilitate the identification of its cause).